Sir Tom Jones on the death of his wife Linda: 'My heart stopped'

Sir Tom Jones has spoken of the death of his wife Linda in public for the first time, saying being with her during her death was "the hardest thing I've ever done in my life". On stage at the Hay Festival in Hay-on-Wye, Wales, Sir Tom Jones revealed how he felt about the death of his wife Linda to GQ editor Dylan Jones.

Holding back tears he told the audience, "We were married for 59 years, and we knew each other since we were kids... She has always been very important to me, throughout my life, now I realise she might be the most important thing in my life. I realise even more now how important she was to me, and she still is."

He also revealed an anecdote about spending time with her in his snooker room at their house in Weybridge when they were in their 30s.

He said, "She was in there with friends and I might have been getting a bit 'too large'. I had a glass of champagne, a cigar, and I was like what do you think of my house, and my snooker room? And she said 'Hey! Hey what are you doing?!' And I said 'I’m just sharing.' And she said, 'You don’t really think you’re Tom Jones do you? I married Tommy Woodward [his birth name], that’s who I married.'"

The hour long talk covered many aspects of his life, from his childhood in Pontypridd, Wales, through the swinging Sixties and residence in Las Vegas, and his recent appearance (and subsequent sacking from) BBC talent show The Voice. His autobiography, Over the Top and Back, is out now. Below are some highlights from his Hay Festival talk.

Why Sir Tom Jones decided to write his story now

“I thought I’d live a bit first. I thought after 50 years, maybe now is the time to talk about it. I was lucky enough to be born in south Wales, and I wanted to tell people how important that part of my life was."

"I can’t remember not singing. There was a lot of singers in my family. When I was very young. I would pull on my mother's skirt and say ‘when are they going to ask me to sing?’”

How Wales was a perfect place to become a singer

“If you’re going to be in the working men's club and you get up there and you can’t project [you’ll be in trouble]. Some places didn’t have microphones. You had to get attention, especially when there was so many singers. It was a great training ground.”

Sir Tom Jones on how to handle hecklers

"I remember I was playing a new club, I can’t remember which valley. I remember seeing a beer bottle coming through the air, and it goes in slow motion when that happens. You used to try and catch it and say ‘thanks very much’. You tried to make the best of a bad situation."

How he met Elvis

"I was in Los Angeles at the Paramount studios for a movie and the music. It was 1965, my first year, and they told me ‘Elvis is here and he would like to say hello’. I didn’t know that he knew anything about me. At that time I had three singles and an album, and my third single was “With These Hands”."

"When I used to play pubs in Wales I’d sing an Elvis Presley song, and they would say ‘you are great’ and I would say ‘I will meet him someday’, and I saw him at Paramount walking towards me singing “With These Hands”, and I thought my God this is surreal if the boys back home could see me now!”

Sir Tom Jones recounted the story of how he took his family to see Frank Sinatra at Caesar’s Palace the night before his first gig where he would be following him as the second act. After the gig Sinatra asked his father how he created his son…

“Mitchell and Butlers. My father used to drink this beer in the Wardrobe Club. He’s been drinking that and came home [to my mother] and…”

The advice Sinatra and Elvis gave him

“Elvis said to me ‘we don’t record songs with [jazz] standards, we leave that to Frank Sinatra’. Then with Sinatra, he’d say ‘forget the rock ’n’ roll. Elvis was trying to pull me one way, Sinatra was trying to pull me another”.

Sir Tom Jones on the death of his wife

“It’s very difficult, the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. We were married for 59 years, we knew each other since we were kids. It was fast, she had cancer. I was doing an Asian tour, in the Philippines and I got the call that it was terminal, my heart stopped. I flew back to Los Angeles, and she had a week left in the hospital. It was very difficult for me.”

“She was always very important to me, she was such a natural person and Welsh, and we grew up together. Our sense of humour was the same, we came from the same town. She’s always been very important to me, throughout my life, now I realise she might be the most important thing in my life. I realise even more now how important she was to me, she still is.”

Sir Tom Jones when asked 'was there ever a moment you thought the marriage wouldn’t last?'

“No. No it was solid, a solid marriage that nothing could shake. That’s how it was. I felt very lucky to have fallen in love at an early age, when we were teenagers, and we fell in love, not just in lust. A lot of teenagers do fall in lust, and it doesn’t last. We both knew this was forever, we both knew for as long as we’d be alive.”

On how he felt when the BBC sacked him from The Voice

“I felt a bit bad at the beginning, because of the way they told us. We had a call from the BBC, and my immediate reaction, was they don’t want you, “go on then” [makes a fist with a punching movement]. A very Welsh reaction. ‘And the horse you rode in on.’ It bothered me because I was enjoying it.”